Welcome Home Elder Louder

So the highlight of our weekend was being able to meet/see Jason!  I have been hearing about him for almost two years now (he left on his mission in November, and Nate and I started dating in January), but had yet to meet him.  When we heard that he had a three hour layover in Dallas we were excited to be able to see him!

We started getting worried Saturday that we were going to miss him.  We got a late start, our first two attempts to get out of College Station were blocked by police cars, and then I started heading to the wrong direction on the freeway.  Halfway there we almost ran out of gas, and so pulled over at the first stop the GPS told us would have a gas station.  It turns out, that it was closed and we drove by another closed gas station until we finally got to a gas station, where we realized we "stood out", especially since we were dressed up for the temple.  There was even a sign on the barred door of the gas station that said, "Remove hoods before coming inside."  I was glad when we made it out of there.  We also hit some bad traffic once we got into downtown Dallas, but we finally did make it to the airport.  It ended up being okay that we were later then we planned for, because it took Jason awhile to go through customs.

Once we got there we realized that the Dallas airport is a lot bigger than we expected, and we had set up ambiguous plans to meet "at the airport".  So we were really hoping that Jason had written down our phone numbers, which he had, and so we were able to meet up with him.

This was supposed to be as Jason stepped off of the shuttle, but Nate had just bitten into a candy bar, so we made Jason recreate it.

We decided not to make Jason take too many pictures, but I couldn't resist getting one of the brothers.  

After our quick trip to the airport we headed to the Dallas temple.  Living in College Station you have to be creative about when you go to the temple.  We both felt the importance of being able to go and that we needed to be there.  There are a lot of blessings to be gained from going to the temple.

I had to work last Saturday, but that meant that I got Friday off, and so I headed down to Houston to celebrate my nephew Zach's 7th birthday!  I forgot my camera so I don't have any pictures to post, but I had a lot of fun.  I got to go to the zoo during the day with my two youngest nephews, and then at night Zach chose ribs for his birthday dinner and for his dessert he wanted chocolate chip pumpkin bread.  A very adventurous seven year old!  Since I spent the night, that means that on Saturday I was in Houston, College Station, Dallas, then back to College Station.  I spent a total of 10 hours in the car this weekend! But it was worth it.

In other sad news, our boundaries got realigned in our ward, and Nate and I are now in the College Station 1st ward, which means that I no longer get to work with my Beehives :(  All of them are staying in the 2nd ward, but I will hopefully pass them in the halls now and then.  It is mostly just younger college aged students like us that got switched from our ward to the 1st ward.  We are wondering if it is going to be another student type ward.  I hope not, because I really like being in a family ward.  The good news is, now we will get to know even more people in the area, and some of our friends got moved with us so it will be fun.